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Topic: caged queen "shelf life" (Read 3318 times)

hi, I am wondering about how long could a (purchased) queen be confined in a cage with the few workers coming with, without any damage, before she really needs a hive to feed her and to continue her egg-laying job?

I have kept the queen and attendents alive for 10 days after recieving them. I put a drop of water on the screen once in the morning and then in the evening another drop of water and a small drop of honey and they did quite well.

what if i want to store my own queen? what's the best way, ok i've bought queen cages, so..i put her and a few attendants into the cage and give her a drop of water every day, i can keep them in my room, right?what about food? am i better off buying marshmallows and give it in, or how do i make them some candy?

just remember, a queen doesn't feed her self, she needs attendants to feed her, bee's can feed a queen from outside the cage but if you take her from a hive she needs attendant to live, when attendants die put more in with her.

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THAT's ME TO THE LEFT JUST 5 YEARS FROM NOW!!!!!!!!

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abejaruco, what are you aiming at? if you take the queen out for a few days and put her back in? or what? i think that those few attendands provide with the minimum food, that's why she looses weight and size, only few days later after introducing into a hive, she gains the weight back up.

>what about food? am i better off buying marshmallows and give it in, or how do i make them some candy?

Simple candy that is just sugar and water or honey and sugar works well. Marshmallows are ok for an introduction but they are not good food as they have too many solids. The queen is not laying and so she only requires sugar. If you set up a "battery box" then you can cage the queen, put some workers in the box and feed them through the screen with a drop or two of water every day and a piece of "candy" inside for them to eat. After a couple of weeks you can dump the workers out (by a hive or they will be lost as they have been gone too long and will not be oriented) and dump a few new workers in. You can keep many queens this way. The battery box can be bought from Mann lake or made from any box that is beeproof by putting a small screen over a hole so they can breath and you can give them some water from time to time.

>so basicly, for a queen "bank" you don't really need a hive, or is it more quality related, to keepeeing queens in a strong hive, rather changing those few attendats?

Any queen bank requires a certain amount of maintenance. With a free flying one (a five frame nuc with a frame of queen cages) you have to periodically add a frame of brood to keep them from turning into laying workers, dwindling or otherwise losing morale. You have to watch them as they sometimes make a queen from the frame of open brood. If you let the new queen stay too long they will eventually kill some of the queens.

If you have a queen bank in a battery box that is confined, you'll have to change workers periodically and have some source for water and food, where the free flying one will take care of that themselves.

ok, so obviusly marshmallow isn't good. did a test -caged 14 bees, 7 with so called candy and 7 with marshmallow.they seemed to enjoy the marsmallow much more but the result..ah...they'd all surelly die in 2 dayss with marshmallow, only 3 were left this morning. so know you know why you get dead bees when releasing a queen with marshmallow.